Profile Writing Response

This piece was moderately difficult to write. I had a little trouble getting what I wanted to say about the Strutt down into a workable, small enough draft - the piece is aimed at the Index and right now is hovering around 1200 words, so it needs to be cut down a touch if it continues to be written for that audience in my next draft. I had four interviews on the subject, two of which (with Andy and Sean of the Strutt) were pretty dense with information and other things of note, which made it a little difficult to pick and choose what to emphasize.

I also feel somewhat like this is more of a straightforward journalism piece, and while it attempts to tell the story of how the Strutt has developed as a music venue over time, I'm not sure how much dramatic tension, character development, etc. it has. We're constantly told to show, not tell, but I was having a hard time doing much description at all, with all the facts that needed to get on the page crowding that sort of thing out. I didn't have a concrete event to talk about other than the interviews I did, and I'm wondering if some sort of description of a show at the Strutt might help to flesh out how the place actually functions better. Also, I kept thinking that I was supposed to have a Franklin outline for the piece, but simply could not make it work. The only "complication" I could think of was Kalamazoo's music scene becoming anemic after the departure of the Kraftbrau some years ago, and how the Strutt coming into its own resolved that problem, but the piece is supposed to be about the Strutt, not Kalamazoo's music scene.

Other than that I feel the piece works together as a whole and it wrote itself rather smoothly, but it lacks a little life. Perhaps making it more of a story would help with that.

Strutt Profile Piece

Who at Kalamazoo College hasn’t heard of the Strutt? It’s that corner building jutting out like the prow of a ship into the intersection of Stadium and Academy. The student that makes the ever-so-arduous and oh-so-time consuming voyage – in reality, as most of you know it’s only about ten minutes from campus, depending on traffic – can reap many a benefit, however: the Strutt has good food, if a little more than the average college student likes to spend to fill his or her stomach, good hot chocolate – I can’t speak for the coffee because I myself don’t drink it – and what looks to be a nice bar. They also have free wireless, a decent music selection on at pretty much all times, comfortable chairs, and to top it off photographs and art prints grace the walls, making it just as good a place to study as Hicks or the library (if you don’t mind the noise) if not better.

But what I have in mind about the Strutt has little to nothing in common with studying. What I want to tell you about is the music. Not just the stereo playing in the background while you read whatever college-related text you’re currently focused on, lovely and convenient though it is to be able to bottle up and store music for later, for when the mood is right, for when it is time to study. What I want to talk about is music, and how the Strutt—that establishment that looks like just your average college-town coffee shop, just five minutes off Kalamazoo College campus—is rejuvenating the Kalamazoo music scene and bringing live acts like you’ve never seen to a place just footsteps from campus.

The Strutt is that corner building’s latest incarnation; it opened in 2007 as Dino’s, and changed its name to the Strutt in 2009. Seniors and maybe juniors at K will remember thinking the shop would be just as transient as its predecessors, but the establishment has had staying power.

Why has the Strutt stuck around and not any others? Part of it is luck, part of it is decent proximity to Western, K College, and Kalamazoo’s downtown, part of it is good management. I’d argue that one of the biggest parts is what makes the place distinct among all the bars and coffee shops in Kalamazoo – the live music.

The Strutt hasn’t always been a focal point for music – on first glance, most would probably peg it as a typical coffee shop. But lately, those involved with music at the Strutt have been taking steps to bring more, bigger, and better musical acts to the venue. Making a music venue out of the Strutt has been part of the plan since its opening; the fact that Andy Catlin, one of the Strutt’s two current booking agents, has been with the company since it came into being stands proof.

Andy says that the place has made itself into a functioning music venue, able to draw reasonably well known Michigan or even national acts, “about as fast as you could,” for a company without a huge overhead or helping hands in the music industry.

Three years ago, there was only the occasional band that I and my friends would consider worthy of attending: I remember seeing Michigan bands Great Lakes Myth Society and The Hard Lessons in spring of 2009, both good shows. I attended exactly zero shows my sophomore year; there was just nothing there that interested me. Junior year I studied abroad for over half of the school year, but I’ve still gone to more shows this year than any year previous: a measly total so far of three, but I plan to and am excited to attend far more later in the quarter.

Duncan Zigterman K’13 has experienced a similar effect. He first went to a Strutt show in fall of 2009, to see Michigan ska band Mustard Plug, but didn’t go to many others that year. This year though, he says that he’s been to about 15 or 20 shows, a dramatic increase. Why is this the case? “I think they’ve been making a more active effort to bring bands from out of the area here,” said Zigterman. Accordingly, there have been more bands he’s been interested in seeing and going to the Strutt for.

Alexis Wright K’13 has also been a more regular attendee at the Strutt’s shows this year, going to around 10 or so thus far. She was unable to attend events her freshman year since she was not yet 18, but even so, said that last year “there was never anything I wanted to see. [My roommate] Megan would go, and I would make fun of her, cause she thought she was cool, going to the Strutt.”

She’s also noticed an upswing in the variety of shows offered. “Last year, the shows were local or shitty, which are sometimes the same thing. I was really surprised when I got the flyer for September/October, with Lightning Bolt, Xiu Xiu, and others.”

How has the Strutt accomplished this stuff? It all has to do with building relationships with booking agencies over time, and sinking enough money so that they’ll know a venue like the Strutt is interested and can give the amount of cash needed to bring a band to town. Andy Catlin has been working hard to accomplish this. “Why we’re getting all these national acts now is because for the last three years I’ve been e-mailing these people,” he says. It’s all rather depressingly fiscal – “Booking is this really weird system based on money,” says Catlin. A band can love the venue and want to come, but it’s all up to the booking agents and the exchange of cold, hard cash between the venue and booking agencies. Sink a certain amount of money and interest in a company and they’re more willing to send bigger acts your way, says Catlin.

On top of that, the variety to now be found at the Strutt is a necessity. Catlin says that showcasing many different genres is the “only way you can survive doing a music venue,” that you “can’t just depend on any genre.” Different kinds of acts bring in more fans, hopefully bringing in more revenue so the business can stay afloat. Sean Hartman, the Strutt’s other booking agent, was hired about eight months ago, and has since then brought an even more diverse group of bands to the venue. He says that the “focus here is on variety for sure” and that he tries to bring in more experimental music.

Catlin and Hartman are also open-minded musically, translating into more diverse music for fans in the Kalamazoo area. Catlin says that “who I am as a music fan […] I’m super into all types of music. I truly do appreciate all these different genres.” Hartman also tries to bring bands that most have not heard of to town, attempting to “turn people on to new bands” – something you really don’t find at every music venue.

In just three years, the Strutt has been able to bring relatively well known artists Deals Gone Bad, Xiu Xiu, Acid Mothers Temple, Mustard Plug, Dan Deacon, and will have doom-metallers Earth in June. That’s really spanning the genres, with ska, funk, electronic, psychedelic/experimental, and metal making appearances. The Strutt has rap shows on occasion, often has local folk and rock bands, and hosts an open mic night every Tuesday night. All this, and it’s not even a dive. Whether that’s a good or bad thing is debatable, but as Catlin said, “It’s a refreshing place for musicians and I think music fans too.”

Reading Response, Week 5

This week I really enjoyed viewing the various slideshows Marin linked us. I didn't view all of them - there seemed to be about sixty - but I'll probably be working on seeing them all over the next couple of weeks, they were so enjoyable. The use of black and white photos was striking - illustrating the story of a tuxedo-purveyor (that's probably not his proper title, but we'll go with it) with such lack of color seemed like a perfect choice. For most stories, this choice worked well, though for others - such as the story of the taxidermist - I felt color photos could have been used to better effect. I also loved the stories that were told - the people had such character. However, it was a little strange to watch the slideshow and then be presented with a little snippet of text providing more background on the person - sometimes, but not often, background that I wanted to learn about the person in the slideshow itself. This probably wasn't included in the show itself because it wasn't relevant to the story being told, and perhaps others didn't have this problem because as I have just discovered, you can view this 'About' at anytime, even previous to the show. A minor point.

The slideshows seem so simple - a person tells their story, a photojournalist snaps some photos of the scenery, and voila! you've got the product. But so much work must go on behind the scenes, work in finding the right person, getting their story out of them, taking the right photos, let alone editing it all together in such a harmonious way. I hope that my final project will be a fraction of what these slideshows are.

Moving on to Kristof. His topics were always interesting, for which I admire him. He also always provides resolution to his stories, general as some of his conclusions may be. His stories are concise and to the point, providing a perfect snapshot of whatever his opinions may be. However, for whatever reason I found his voice somewhat bland. He definitely has a voice in his pieces, but the way that he puts things/phrases things is just so...normal. I can't think of a better way to describe it. Doesn't mean his writing is boring, but it doesn't give me a sense of mood or tone so much, I suppose. I was interested in reading more about a couple of the subjects he wrote about - the American prostitution story in particular could have been so much of a bigger piece, particularly having recently read Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's in-depth piece, "Trina and Trina," but for what it was I liked it. Overall I enjoyed Kristof as a writer but would like to read more of his long-form work.

Choose Your Own Assignment - Profile Focus

I didn't expect to enjoy this piece as much as I did, but there you have it. Here's a link to the profile I picked for the class to read this week: http://www.slate.com/id/2291929/pagenum/all/#p2

In fact, when I clicked on the page to read the story, I felt similar to how the profile's author, Vanessa Friedman, felt when she was asked to report on this story: cynical. How could a fluffy little piece on a professional hair stylist be of much interest to me? But just as Friedman's assumptions about Vidal Sassoon were proven wrong, so my expectations that this story would be boring and of no merit were disproven. Sassoon is an interesting character, and though Friedman doesn't go overly in-depth into his life, the details, large and small, she pulls out about him - that he vaguely knew Marlon Brando, was one of the first to become interested in Pilates as fitness, and completely reinvented the hairstyling profession to become the one that we now know - attract the reader's interest. He's a remarkable guy, and I think this illustrates well one of the tenets we've been told of profile writing - pick an interesting person to write about.

In addition, some of turns of phrase - Friedman's description of Sassoon as the "Bill Gates of hair" and the quotes she obtained - regarding Michelle Obama's hair - "Oh! What wonderful straightening techniques they have today" are well done. The author also creates an identifiable voice for herself that stands out, which is interesting to observe. This may be no profile of a serious event or person, and it's certainly no New Yorker profile - I decided against posting one of those after going through several 10 - 13 page long articles, seeing as we won't be writing pieces that long anyway - but it does paint an interesting, descriptive picture of a person, which is what a profile sets out to achieve.

Additionally, I found this while looking for profiles on the Nieman Storyboard, thought it might be an interesting read for people looking for more information on writing profiles: http://sonofboldventure.blogspot.com/2011/03/profile-writing-basics.html

Personal Essay, Second Draft

This is pretty heavily rewritten. Here goes.

The outline is supposed to be:
Complication: Relationships consume Ellen
Development:
Ellen breaks relationship
Ex rejects Ellen
Ellen fears loss
Resolution: Ellen releases control
If that doesn't match up, then I've got something of a problem.

I’ve never been what you would call “boy-crazy,” though maybe you wouldn’t know that from the moving in and out of relationships I’ve been doing during my three years of collegiate life. I’ve loved video games and reading ever since elementary school, though these days Kalamazoo College’s hectic academic schedule keeps us apart for protracted periods of time. I’m not the type of girl who planned her wedding out in third grade, or tried to figure out what the name of my future husband would be. I didn’t have my first boyfriend until freshman year of college.

Now I’m a junior and I’m on number three. So I have some experience with this boy thing. Maybe it’s because of my inexperience with dating and love until so recently that when I fall for someone, I fall hard. I’ll cling to a relationship like there’s no tomorrow. Friendships in themselves mean a lot to me – I don’t make friends easily, so when someone ends a friendship with me, my stomach flips along with my world. I wrap myself up in relationships, platonic or romantic; I’ve often had the thought that they matter to me more than the academic aspect of college. So when I found myself, in November of my sophomore year at Kalamazoo College, forced to choose between two potential suitors – my ex-boyfriend of freshman year, Stewart; and the freshman guy I’d been dating since around October, Shafer, I knew that I was making an important decision regarding relationships. What I failed to realize was how far this would impact my friendships, and how tightly I myself would attempt to cling to the now cold corpse of a formerly vibrant friendship.

It begins what seems now far back in the spring of our freshman year, now two years ago, when Stewart and I decided to end our relationship. Politeness abounded on both sides – the whole idea began, of all places, in a facebook message that he wrote to me. In that logically thought-out message thread, we revealed our fears about the “long-distance relationship.” Never mind the fact that the great insurmountable obstacle of distance was being located two and a half hours apart, he in Chicago and myself in the small town of Niles, Michigan. Stewart wrote of his past problems with this kind of relationship, and I recalled the hard time I’d gone through in the month-long separation we’d had over our school’s winter break. In the end, we decided that it was of benefit for us to break up at the beginning of summer instead of subjecting our relationship to the stresses of distance, so that we might avoid a possible implosion later on – our already crumbling social group could not endure an explosive falling out on the two of our parts.

We entertained the idea of dating come next year, come close proximity again. I fell in more with this idea than he did, and clung to that raft of an idea over summer as the distance grew hard on me, as I realized that I still had feelings for this guy. I texted him a long message about how I missed him, how I hoped we could be together again, about how I loved him. He told me that maybe I didn’t really know what love was, a crushing blow.

But this wasn’t really where our relationship broke. Despite this, I cherished thoughts of a reunion come fall, hiding them deep down inside. For summer and much of fall, we stayed friends, hung out, remained close. A mutual friend of ours, after seeing us over summer, actually thought we were still together. Mentally, psychically, we may have been – we acted the same way we always had, without the physicality and formality of a relationship. The experiences of fall and winter of sophomore year were what worked to tear us apart. I pined after Stewart – I saw him nearly every day, we got along the same as we always had, we played the same games. I wanted our old relationship back, but I couldn’t tell him. After all, he had told me no. He would have to be the one to bring us back together.

Every weekend, often during the week as well, I made the lonesome nighttime trek from his dorm room suite – a place of gaudy, goofily arranged Christmas lights, stadium seating featuring two (2) couches (one on a homemade wooden platform behind the other), and copious amounts of video games – where he and many of our friends congregated, across campus to my single dorm, and loneliness. As I walked back night after night, fantasies of Stewart running out of his dorm after me, realizing that he really did want me after all, ran through my head. But it never happened, and slowly but surely I began to realize that it probably wouldn't.

Then I fell into the second of my college relationships with Shafer. After five months I was finally moving on from a guy I’d pined over all summer and part of fall to a potentially great new guy. However, Stewart didn’t end up seeing it that way. Being the game nerd that I am, I met and began to get to know Shafer at a Super Smash Brothers Brawl tournament, where we played the card game Magic: the Gathering. We ended up back in Stewart’s six person dorm room suite that night hanging out with all of my friends, Shafer’s head of Greek/Syrian, massively fluffy shoulder-length hair conspicuously in my lap. Stewart saw us together, and now he wanted me back.

I took him back – for a day. I remember that day of golden sunlight on the suite couch, my head in his lap, his hand stroking my back. It did not last. Shafer protested, shouting my name across upper quad, writing persuasive message about how “Stewart had his chance” and that I should come back to him. And I did. Something probably broke in Stewart when that happened, and I still regret having wrenched someone’s heart from joy to despair like that, all in one day.

Stewart and I tried to remain friends in the face of this. Over the course of months, we still hung out with the same people, played the same games, ate in the same cafeteria together. But in the end it couldn’t work out that way for him. We held many a discussion on the artificial plane of facebook, and eventually decided to grow up and actually talk to each other in person. One winter night in January, he came to my room. He sat in my chair. He told me, “I love you.” Tangled up in my desire for Shafer, I could no longer have any of that. I felt no reciprocal love. I wanted his friendship and nothing more, and I couldn’t see how much that simple fact hurt him.

When all this failed, what he did next was logical. This turned out to be the real world version of “de-friending.” He completely cut me out of his life, a surgeon excising a cancerous tumor, a doctor cauterizing a wound. Out of nowhere he simply stopped social interaction with me. The texts, the friendly bandying-about, even seeing each other over dinner – they were gone and my world began to flip.

Another winter’s night, I pinned him down to find out what was going on. He sat in the green and white striped club chair on loan from my parents’ house, I on my bed, the room dimly lit by my small decorative silver lamp affectionately named Horatio. He didn’t meet my glance when I looked at him.

Distinct memories of our conversation that evening do not survive. Emotion clouds it. Nor do I want to put things he didn’t actually say into his mouth. He told me that he connected me too much with the person he had been freshman year, a person he wanted to move away. That our connection was tainted, that he knew no other way to act around me other than as a lover. Complete severance of our friendship would further his attempt to move on from me, something he had found impossible to this point.

I cried. I told him that even if he came back to be my friend after finally working through his issues about me, I would always remember what he had done to me. I told him I hated him.

Why couldn’t someone I had considered my best friend look at me with a friendly face?

Why had I lost him, and how could I get him back as a friend? Because despite my assertions of hate, that was what I really wanted. Moving on I could understand well enough, but my feelings of rejection and loss were overwhelming. Why wasn’t I good enough? How could he remain friends with everyone else from last year, and not me, the person he’d been closest to? I didn’t know what to do other than fight, and fight I did, with more tears and angry words. To no avail.

Where Stewart’s friendship had been, there was now a vacuum, a black hole, pulling in feelings of happiness and spewing out hatred and rejection. At one point, Shafer, who strangely became fast friends with Stewart, invited myself and Stewart over to eat some leftover pasta and play cards in his room, without telling either of us he’d invited more than one person. I showed up first, heard that Stewart was coming, and then my stomach plummeted. Stewart showed up, saw that I was there, and almost promptly left, staying for a few short minutes to have some of the pasta and converse with Shafer.

I lost Stewart, and he’s not coming back. He’s moved on: while we still have some friends in common, he has a new girlfriend, and a new set of friends. A year later, I still haven’t talked to him. Just last weekend, he was invited over to a friend of mine’s apartment to play cards. I looked forward to the prospect of maybe becoming friendly again. Stewart came, but not when I was able to be there. He pointedly avoiding being around me because of group “politics,” a friend later told me.

At this point, however, I think that I’ve finally come to grips with the matter. Dealing with loss of this kind is difficult, and extremely frustrating – it’s like having lost your keys. You search and search, wishing that your keychain had some kind of tracking device on it that beeped, anything to help you relocate that most precious of objects. In this case, however, it’s like I put my keys on a conveyer belt and expected them to be there again when I wanted them. It wasn’t reasonable of me to expect Stewart to simply sit there and stay being my friend, keep being there for me, while I carried on my new relationship with Shafer right in front of his face – trying to do so probably broke part of his heart. He needed to act, and so he did, in the most reasonable way he knew how.

He doesn’t want to be my friend on account of a number of painful associations our friendship has, and that is understandable. My attempt to hold onto our friendship when he no longer wanted was the opposite of how a friendship should be; it’s a mutual contract, and once one person has signed off on his or her part, there is little the other party can do about it. One must simply relax and let them go, difficult as that may be. It’s not worth it to chase after those that don’t want you; time spent in the company of those who want you is time much better spent.

Tom Franklin Explains It All

Reading Jon Franklin's Writing for Story proved quite an experience. As I ran through the pages, I found many concepts that I instinctively agreed with along with others that left me a little confused but eventually accepting. Overall I hope that the text will help smooth the writing process along for me. Though I can't exactly say I used too much of his structure in writing this post, so fasten your seatbelts, this might be something of a rough, bumpy ride.

First of all, the things we hold in common. I enjoyed his section on outlining - the process is one that I myself, to an extent, attempt to or need to do in order to write anything complex. But the way I outline is far less refined and adept than his. His explication of how precisely one should outline is one that I want to use in my writing from here on out, and hopefully that'll be a resolution that I stick with; the process brings clarity and logic to writing, something we could all use more of.

His idea that one should begin at the end and work from there I also agree with. How can you really know what you're introducing the reader to if you don't quite have it set up yet? I also attempt to utilize this technique when I write. But here, again, Franklin's knowledge and experience with craft trumps mine, since when I do the writing that I most often do (critical writing, in my case), I usually jump headfirst into the development, the evidence I have for my argument, as opposed to starting with the major resolution part. It's what I did when I started writing this piece - skipped the introductory paragraph in favor of getting to the meat of the writing. Since I haven't quite got it in my head what I want to say about Writing for Story, I sit down and write it out first, then try to come up with an introduction that encapsulates what I've written, and a hopefully punchy conclusion.

This points to another problem I encounter when writing - not knowing exactly what I want to say yet and attempting to just sit down and write it all out. Which is where the idea of outlining - strictly structured outlining - will hopefully come in handy in the future.

Consistent use of active verbs is another writer's commandment I've heard preached ever since I've come to college - and if I had a better memory, I'd probably remember hearing some of that even through high school. It's something I'd like to improve on, though in crunch time more passive verbs or static 'to be' verbs sometimes present themselves as easier, or at least require less thinking about what word to use. Franklin also discusses word choice and the matter of getting the just-right word for the occasion. He says that the thesaurus on the whole isn't of much use to writers. Here I might have to disagree with him, because I've found the thesaurus in my word processing app useful over the years. Sometimes I'll come up with the next-to-right word, but for whatever reason there's an impassable block in my mind to that word that's just crying out for me to use, the one that I know but can't remember right now. Out comes the thesaurus, I look up the almost-right word, and there on the computer is the word that my memory has been scrambling for. It's also great for when you've been using a word over and over and over; you're sick of the word, you know whoever eventually reads what you've written will get sick of it, and with your handy thesaurus you can come up with something fresh and new.

Franklin's advice on how to structure your stories will be of great help to me; I have hardly anything of a creative writing background, so any words on how to show instead of tell are of use to me. His breakdown of the piece into transitional, preparatory, and climactic narrative also helps to see that writing isn't that complicated or intimidating of a beast, when you get down to the small parts. And his descriptions of the various storytelling techniques - foreshadowing, flashback, among others - make these things more graspable for the uninitiated writer that I am. His last chapter, about the artist and art, left me feeling a little left out because I've never felt the gripping need to write stories to change the world, or the distinction that I'm a special artist. In fact, I've never wanted to be an artist. All of which is helpful in evaluating what I want to do with my life; something I didn't really expect to contemplate when reading this book, but good nonetheless.

Personal Essay Writing Challenges

The personal essay piece was a challenge for me to write for several reasons. One, I don't do much story writing in general, meaning that I've never done this before. I have done some journalistic writing of stories, but never one that hit so close to home, never one with myself as a central character. And I wish I would've read Lopate's essay that stressed fleshing out the "I" character before sitting down to write this, because the tips in that text would have been quite helpful in alerting me to the fact that most everyone reading my piece doesn't really know who "I" am.

Getting down to more specifics: As has been noted in some of the comments I've received, I'm not sure how well the key story transitions or relates to the story I wanted to tell about loss. I agree that could use some work. Additionally, looking back I'm not sure how well this shows change in my personality, which was an important part of the assignment, and so in my next draft I would like to emphasize that more, possibly through further fleshing out some of the secondary examples I mentioned and cutting down on the key/moving into apartment elements of the piece. Lastly, I had difficulty making the essay feel like it had a point, like there was something to be learned from what I experienced, and would like to hit on that more. I did enjoy the writing process, however, and look forward to improving it with everyone's help through workshop.